Call centers are a necessity for most companies and corporations with a large customer base. Nevertheless, call centers are often also cost centers, and thus the need to reduce their operational cost is felt by a large majority of such companies. Several methods have been devised to cut costs, such as fully automating certain services to reduce the personnel cost, and reducing the average call duration to cut the telecommunication cost. When costs are cut, it remains important to keep a high level of customers satisfaction.
A current trend is to improve efficiency and customer satisfaction by matching customers or customers' requests with Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) in an optimal way. This optimal matching translates into higher customer satisfaction because the CSR is well prepared to deal with the customer's request, and also yields cost savings since CSRs can handle requests more efficiently and thus serve more customers over a given period of time.
Currently used methods for customer—CSR matching include retrieving previously-collected information about the customer (e.g., by asking the customer to enter an account number) and collecting information from the customer about the reason for the call (typically via an IVR system which can be navigated by DTMFs or by voice). In both cases, this information is collected immediately after the call is connected, and used to determine which CSR the call should be routed to. The customer's preferred language is often determined, either explicitly (the customer presses a button to select a specific language) or implicitly (by means of a language selection/recognition algorithm), so that the call can be routed to a CSR who speaks the language. However, such systems only connect customers to CSRs that can speak the same language. Typically, these systems are deployed only in countries where more than one language is commonly spoken (e.g. English and French in Canada, English and Spanish in the US). In contrast, the present invention is extremely useful even in countries where only one major language is spoken, but where there are some dialectal differences.